Day #6: I Don't Want to Be

Part of deciding what you want to be is knowing what you DON'T want to be. Today's model poem is by Christian Wiman, titled  “I Don’t Want to Be a Spice Store."  

As you read it, think about WHO Wiman wants to be, what kind of a person? 

Here are the opening lines:

I don’t want to be a spice store.
I don’t want to carry handcrafted  Marseille soap,
or tsampa and yak butter,
or nine thousand varieties of wine.

………

Notice that after describing the "spice store" he doesn't want to be, Wiman TURNS the poem and begins writing about the "kind of store" he does want to be:

I want to be the one store that’s open all night
and has nothing but necessities.
Something to get a fire going
and something to put one out.
………..

I encourage you to read the entire poem (it's not long, and you can also click on the link and hear the poet read it himself).

Then use the poem as your diving board to explore what you DON'T want to be (and maybe what you DO want to be).  Here is mine. Notice that I do not say explicitly what I DO want to be; I let the reader infer that from the "don'ts."

I Don't Want to be a Yellow Legal Pad
by Allison Berryhill

I don’t want to be a yellow legal pad.
I don’t want to be the surface
on which thought-filled people press ideas.
The yellow page absorbs the pressure of
urgent pens
digging two, three pages deep:
indententations of intentions.

I don’t want to be the
receptacle.
I don’t want to be the canvas
underneath the Starry Night.

I don’t want to be the
oil pan catching the dripping muck
beneath the chassis.